Jazz Recommendations – 2019

Jan 31 2020

Best of 2019 #17: Camila Meza & the Nectar Orchestra – “Ámbar”

 

The surprising thing about Camila Meza and her new recording Ámbar is that this really shouldn’t be that surprising.  And yet, it is.  In fact, it’s stunning.  The vocalist-guitarist made a huge impression with her contributions to Ryan Keberle’s Azul Infinito and Fabian Almazan’s Alcanza, her voice shining like a sun at the center of all things.  And she was a light who illuminated every other musician on the recording as brightly as she herself, and made it inconsequential who belonged to the orbit of the other.  That ability to be at the center of things while equally and inextricably connected to every other element of the music is an enviable balance for a vocalist to strike.  Her own recording, the 2016 Traces on Sunnyside Records, further displayed Meza’s talent for an arresting delivery that makes one snap to attention while also conveying a soothing comfort.

But even here, Ámbar seems like a plateau achieved more audacious than anything reasonably anticipated for her next recording.  The strings arrangements of her Nectar Orchestra melt into the firm embrace of both jazz ensemble and Chilean folk, except during those passages where the strings say to hell with staying grounded in rhythmic patterns, let’s go soaring.  This is an album of many great proclamations and big statements, yet never seems far removed from a poignant melody and soft touch.  Inspired renditions of songs by Elliot Smith, Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays, Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes, and Milton Nascimento snap right into place with Meza originals, and come off sounding like they’d all been meant for this project on exactly this very day.  It’s one of the very best recordings of 2019, and, in the context of Meza’s recording career, it wholly decimates all measures of what could and should be expected next from her.

Your album personnel:  Camila Meza (vocal, acoustic & electric guitars); Eden Ladin (piano, juno, celesta, keyboards), Noam Wiesenberg (bass, arrangements), Keita Ogawa (drums, percussion), Tomoko Omura (violin), Fung Chern Hwei (violin), Benjamin von Gutzeit (viola), and Brian Sanders (cello).

The Self-Produced album was released on Sony Masterworks.

Music from New York City.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon

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Jan 31 2020

Best of 2019 #18: Laughing Bastards – “Unanimal”

 

There’s a pretty big statement made when you drop your own original compositions into the mix with those of Carla Bley and John Lurie, and they fall in with the crowd like family.  The quintet Laughing Bastards clearly subscribe to the idea of strange and beautiful music, and hold the sentiment that collisions of melodic ideas are the best kind of dissonance.  There’s a curious allure to these pieces by the Belgium-based ensemble, an attraction that isn’t immediately attributable to one particular quality or characteristic.  But then, and quite suddenly, one of those jumbled melodic concepts become a concrete vision, and it’s as gorgeous a spectacle to behold as gold sunlight breaking through the deepest clouds of grey.  I have no idea how this album flew under the radar of so many, but it’s a shame that it did, because it’s one of the most beautiful things to hit the shelves in 2019.

Your album personnel:  Michel Mast (tenor sax), Jan-Sebastiaan Degeyter (guitar), Anneleen Boehme (double bass), Marcos della Rocha (drums), and Eline Duerinck (cello).

The album is Self-Produced, and released as Ham Records.

Music from Ghent, Belgium.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon

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Jan 30 2020

Best of 2019 #19: Adam Baldych Quartet – “Sacrum Profanum”

 

Adam Baldych, as with many musicians before him, came up through the classical music traditions, and, like many musicians before him, gravitated to jazz’s untamed wildness and structural freedoms.  But you don’t forget where you’ve come from, and the act of revisiting the past is as natural as breathing.  The challenge is in how to interpret the past, now, viewed through older perspectives and in the light of today.  And so, on his latest, the violinist keeps one foot in his past traditions and the other in his current, and it’s why austere classical pieces display some of the audacious dramatics of a typical Baldych jazz work, but also, conversely, why the jazz pieces reflect a more focused, sleeker lyricism than what one might otherwise expect from the violinist.  This shadowplay between past and present results in Baldych’s best work to date.

Your album personnel:  Adam Bałdych (violin, renaissance violin), Krzysztof Dys (piano, prepared upright piano, toy piano), Michał Barański (double bass), and Dawid Fortuna (drums, crotales, gran cassa).

Released on ACT Music.

Music from Warsaw, Poland.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon

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Jan 30 2020

Best of 2019 #20: Maurice Louca – “Elephantine”

 

Sometimes putting words to things drains them of their magic.  Laboriously describing every detail of a kaleidoscopic display will never impart the beauty of its unfolding and rejoin.  A vivid dream of whole new mythological lands is likely to lose some of its majesty when the dream is scribbled down upon waking.  The dwindling glow of a sunset on gently rippled waves is only useful as a written device if the imagination of the person reading the words amplifies it sufficiently.  Maurice Louca’s 2019 release Elephantine falls into this category.  The guitarist’s heady mix of cosmic jazz, Egyptian, African, and Yemeni musics, modal and psychedelic jazz is magical, dreamlike, majestic, and imaginative, and it sounds like nothing else that came out in 2019.  Words just won’t do it justice, however.  Clarity is gained from within the experience.

Your album personnel:  Maurice Louca (guitar, piano), Tommaso Cappellato (drums, percussions), Ozun Usta (drums, percussions), Elsa Bergman (bass), Pasquale Mirra (vibraphone), Piero Bittolo Bon (baritone & alto saxophones, bass flute), Anna Högberg (alto sax), Rasmus Kjærgård Lund (tuba), Isak Hedtjärn (clarinet, bass clarinet), Nadah El Shazly (vocals), Natik Awayez (oud), and Ayman Asfour (violin).

Released on Northern Spy Records.

Music from Cairo, Egypt.

I wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Bandcamp – Amazon

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Jan 30 2020

Best of 2019 #21: RaaDie – “Vast Potential”

 

No album in 2019 displayed the immense power of a simple melody more than the RaaDie duo of trumpeter Lorenz Raab and e-zitherist Christof Dienz.  Vast Potential is a gem of minimalism, of sympatico intimacy, and an illustration how a transportive experience is just a matter of the succession of a few well-placed notes.  It’s like casting a spell, and it’s not unlike a mesmerizing effect this lovely recording elicits.  Every year, there are a handful of albums that are staggeringly beautiful, and that is what defines the recording and encapsulates its description.  For albums such as these, of which Vast Potential is one, there is not much more to say than this is one of the most beautiful things you could wish to hear.  And that’s it.

Your album personnel:  Lorenz Raab (trumpet, effects) and Christof Dienz (e-zither, effects).

Released on Traumton Records.

Music from Vienna, Austria.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Bandcamp – Amazon

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